Carn Glas – A Life in Seven Acts

by Roland Spencer-Jones (NOSAS)

The Opening of the Cairn 12.10.15

Carn Glas is one of a cluster of six Neolithic cairns at the base of the Black Isle in Ross-shire. A trio of local archaeology groups have collaborated with the Adopt-a-Monument team of Archaeology Scotland in its restoration. The opening party for the “new” cairn happened during Highland’s Archaeology Fortnight, on October 12^th. Why did it need restoring? Well, it’s a story in Seven acts:

Act One started with the construction of a Cromarty-Orkney-type chambered cairn approximately 3600 BC, as the Neolithic farming package developed in the area. The passages of the chamber at the heart of the huge cairn were aligned north-west to south-east. They consisted of an entrance passage to the south-east, leading to a middle chamber, leading to an inner chamber. An excavation over two seasons by Tony Woodham in 1955-6 produced a series of artefacts dating to this period – a leaf-shaped Neolithic arrowhead, other flints, and numerous pottery shards.

Neolithic Arrowhead from 1956 excavation    (c) National Museums of Scotland

Bronze Age Beaker and Cist Burial in Drumnadrochit

by James McComas (NOSAS)

Go to foot of post for discoveries at the Compass Housing Development 2017 -2018.

Drumnadrochit, by Loch Ness. On the flat former croft land between the Rivers Coilte and Enrick a new NHS Medical Centre is under construction. In January 2015 workers on the site removed a large stone slab. Beneath the slab, undisturbed for perhaps 4000 years, were the crouched remains of an individual resting in a stone lined cist, approximately 0.7 metres deep.

Burial Cist in Drumnadrochit (Courtesy of Mary Peteranna/ AOC)

Initially Highland Council archaeologists assessed the site, concluding it was probably bronze age.  A skull and possible femur were clearly visible, but there were no obvious sign of grave goods. However it was still clearly an significant discovery. Nothing similar had been found in Drumnadrochit before, and whilst there is a profusion of archaeological sites in the area, nothing of this antiquity is known to have been found in the flat lands around Urquhart Bay. The next step was for NHS Highland to appoint an archaeologist to excavate the burial.

I called in briefly to the site several days later to find that the archaeologists appointed were well known to NOSAS – Mary Peteranna, now of AOC, and Steve Birch. Steve was kind enough to give me a brief rundown on what they had found.  It was apparently a fairly typical stone lined cist burial of the early bronze age. The large cap stone, which had been removed by digger when clearing the area, had possibly already been broken in antiquity. There was a thickness of several cm of gravel above the cap stone before digging work began.

The cist during excavation (Courtesy of Mary Peteranna/ AOC)